Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned a series of 44 sonnets pronouncing her profound love for her fiancé Robert Browning. The poetess employs the Petrarchan form in the series and penned Sonnet 43 in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme of “Sonnet 43” is :ABBA, ABBA–CD, CD, CD as opposed to the Petrarchan form that has the rhyme scheme of the sestet as (1) CDE, CDE; (2) CDC, CDC; or (3) CDE, DCE.

There is the use of the figure of speech called Anaphora. Anaphora  is the repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of word groups occurring one after the other. There is also persistent use of alliteration.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and heigh

t My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

The poetess professes that her love that knows no bounds. She seeks to enumerate the way since they are innumerable. She states that she loves him “to the depth and breadth and height.” She covers all aspects, and claims that her loves traces all dimensions. It is not only two-dimensional; but three dimensional and therefore full. There is use of internal rhyme in words like ‘depth’, ‘breadth’. Her soul could reach out to his when they were above the realm of earthly feeling and when they entered the threshold of spirituality signifying “ideal grace.” She loves him enough to fulfill the needs of his daily routine by the day(sun) and night(candlelight).The idea of candlelight gives us the picture of her fulfilling his requirements even in the dark(adverse situations).

I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I

love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

She loves him as unreservedly as men who strive for their legitimate rights. Elizabeth Barrett Browning stresses that to love him was justifiable to her in any case. Her love is genuine and does not expect in return any kind of praise for her love, as she does not expect remuneration in any kind. I love thee with a passion that can identified in degree as it was experienced in the past; the intensity matched with her most poignant griefs. She loves him with her childhood faith that is instinctive and unadulterated; and has no extraneous motive. She loves him with the child-like wonder that she held for saints holding them in awe in the divinity of childhood. Therefore, when the poetess mentions ‘lost saints,’ it refers to  the childhood perception had now been lost and not the saints. She claims that she loves him with “the breath,Smiles, tears”. That is-the very feeling of being existent in both happiness and sorrow; and in both expression and emotion. She finally claims that she may also love him in the  eternal life after death, if God ordains so.

©Rukhaya MK 2012

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